The cover, foil stamped Japanese silk book cloth.
The interior, horizon lines traced from Old Master drawings connecting to create one very long horizon.
The interior, horizon lines traced from Old Master drawings connecting to create one very long horizon.
The interior, horizon lines traced from Old Master drawings connecting to create one very long horizon.
The interior, horizon lines traced from Old Master drawings connecting to create one very long horizon.
Martine Workman (Washington, DC)
martinealicia.com
Old Horizon
2015
foil stamped accordian fold book, pencil and ink, hand drawn with carbon copy transfer
Edition of 5
Dimensions open: 4.875″ x 42.25″
Dimensions closed: 4.875″ x 5.625″
Within the past year, I have spent a lot of time looking at old master drawings (Poussin, Guercino, Rubens and others), particularly of landscapes and landscape backgrounds. I limited my viewing to library and museum websites with digitized collections.
I am interested in the types of marks made in the ink drawings. Some of the drawings are densely drawn, with very realistic detail. Others are more expressive and fluid. I found one commonalty in this genre of drawing: the depiction of the horizon is always drawn as a single horizontal line. Sometimes it is straight, sometimes meandering with a little shading below the horizon, but even in the most densely detailed drawing, the horizon appears as a single line.
Looking at the drawings, I realized these landscapes drawn hundreds of years ago no longer exist, made by people who no longer exist. Trees lose their leaves and eventually die. Forests are cut down for development. We count on the horizon to remain unchanged.
I traced the horizons from my computer screen, connecting them to make one very long horizon line in an accordion book. The book was produced at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, MD, with help from Patricia Lee while I was a Denbo fellow.